


Piquant

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Devastation-verse [22]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-10
Updated: 2004-07-10
Packaged: 2018-10-21 07:00:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity





	Piquant

Jack Shaftoe's life on land (for a definition of 'land' that had begun with brick-sown London soil, stinking black Thames mud and cold, half-salt river water, and expanded to include Epping Forest, the Dorset hills, a variety of muddy Continental battlefields, and excursions to exotic realms such as Qwghlm, Jamaica, and Hy Brasil) had been brutal, filthy and precarious -- a state which he had accepted as easily as he'd accepted hunger, thirst, ugliness and pain, all of which seemed to be the lot of common humanity and especially of those Vagabonds, Devil's poor and other rejects of Church and State in whose company Jack had most frequently found himself; indeed, it had often been his role to increment the sum total of brutality, filth or peril in the lives of those he encountered, by various sins of omission and commission; and Jack Shaftoe had proven himself more capable than many of staying alive, and even of raising himself -- albeit temporarily -- above the endless struggle for food and a safe bed that was the fate of most: but now, out of sight of land, rocking on a chip of wood (for the _Black Pearl_ seemed no more than a splinter in the vast implacable emptiness of sea and sky) under a sky more solidly blue than anything he'd ever seen, Jack found himself wondering whether the unpleasantness of life was as inevitable as he had always assumed; for here, as part of a pirate band who drank and made merry every night, whose goal in life seemed to be nothing more arduous than the acquisition of a great deal of treasure (preferably in the form of small, shiny, portable valuables that belonged to someone else, or rather _had_ belonged to someone else before the _Black Pearl_ and her pirate company happened upon it) and the lazy enjoyment of the long, sunfilled days that spread out from each present moment, seasoned with rum and scented with the unique miasma of pitch, gunpowder, nutmeg and rum that permeated the _Black Pearl_ ; true, occasionally they'd be called upon to do some actual _labour_ , such as hauling upon a rope or climbing aloft into the dizzying bright air to adjust a piece of sail cloth (Jack could not believe that this counted as work, but he listened to the complaints of the hard cases and concluded that this really was as strenuous as it got) and even more occasionally, he presumed, every man aboard -- for Jack, who'd come aboard some fortnight past, had not yet identified any women, though surely (notwithstanding his own experiences) there must be one or two -- would be called upon to lift an axe or cutlass or sword and do some actual pirating, some robbery with violence, some forceful separation of wealth from the wealthy; Jack had no qualms about this, having spent much of his land bound life in similar pursuits, and in fact he found himself looking forward to a little mayhem, for it had been a long time since the last pub brawl in dear old, _draughty_ old Southwark; he had no qualms, either, about the miscellany of opportunities for badness which had lately presented themselves to him, often via the agency of one Captain Jack Sparrow, whom Jack Shaftoe suspected, on occasion, of having Principles and Morals and Ethics and all the rest -- he was certainly not averse to the regurgitation of Philosophy whenever it suited him -- but who had proven extremely flexible in this, and several other, respects: the skin between Jack's shoulder blades prickled with the thought of how it'd been just last night, Jack Sparrow and himself twisted around one another in a position that should have been uncomfortable (and had, in fact, given rise to at least as many aches as it'd assuaged) but had distracted Jack quite comprehensively from the bruising press of his knee against the bulkhead, for Jack Sparrow's busy tongue had been bringing to life nerves that he'd thought dead -- Jack had long since given up any misbegotten notions of shame or embarrassment at what this pirate did, and seemed to _enjoy_ doing, to him, and it was profitless to think in detail of what Sparrow's tongue was up to, besides the fact that any degree of attention to the specifics was likely to bring Jack off far too swiftly, as even the _thought_ of it, up here in the ratlines a night and a morning later, now threatened to do -- besides which, Jack Sparrow's salty, musky cock (the closest Jack ever got to a whole one, these days, and he'd never have been able to twist himself _that_ far, anyway) had been pressing against Jack's stubbled cheek, smearing his cheek with some sticky secretion that Jack couldn't resist, hadn't resisted, swiping out his tongue to taste; and from there it'd been easy enough, much easier than he'd thought (and he _had_ thought of this, more than once, in a confusion of reciprocity, curiosity and oh _Christ_ vengeance; a sharp and urgent desire to get his own back on Jack Sparrow, to get _him_ kicking up a racket and writhing and moaning -- how convenient -- Jack's name) to get his mouth around Sparrow's cock, hot and alive and piquant, sensitive to every motion of Jack Shaftoe's hesitant tongue, causing (some distance away, at the point where the frippery in Sparrow's hair caught and snagged in the thatch of Jack's groin) profound groaning and something that might have started as speech but had been transformed -- no doubt by the actions of Sparrow's lips against Jack's balls -- into a Bedlamite babble and a sinuous writhe that'd almost tipped Jack off the bunk; but he'd braced his shoulder against the _Pearl_ 's creaking hull, and got his free hand firmly on Sparrow's arse (feeling the muscles clench against his palm) and set himself to draw -- nay, to _suck_ \-- more of those noises out of Sparrow, even while the pirate's hand had prised him open like an oyster, pushing into him in rhythm with the organ that had pushed gently against Jack's mouth, and Sparrow's filthy fingers had aimed straight and true for that incendiary place within Jack's arse, the fuse that was cunningly strung between Jack's heart, his lungs, his brain and what remained of his yard, so that Jack had almost panicked at the feeling of drowning, even while he longed to be drawn down into the dark sparkling depths: but Sparrow had held onto him, let him breathe, made him breathe and then gasp and then spend; he'd even pulled back at his own moment of crisis: and now Jack, swaying slightly with remembered sensation, scowled at that memory, for Sparrow had tasted _him_ as though Jack were a rare feast, and Jack's curiosity wouldn't let him rest; he wondered how long it was, now, until the nightly merriment was done and they could be abed again, how long it would be until he learnt all the piquant flavours of the pirate's body.


End file.
